Exchanges – Chinese and Russian Notaries Take Classes in Italy

The following is an article published on 12 October 2012 in the Corriere della Sera about training periods that Russian and Chinese notaries spend in Italy in order to learn in detail about our Notarial system:

“Italian notaries get their own back. Having always been pointed out as the guild that more than any other refuses the free market, they are now experiencing a season of international popularity. Russian and Chinese notaries continue to participate in training periods in Italy, the better to learn the “secrets” of our notarial system. Even The Economist, which has always maintained that “for decades the 5,000 Italian notaries have enriched themselves on the back of laws that limit their numbers and locations”, is now willing to recognise the superior efficiency of the Latin notarial model. 

It is no accident that China, the world’s economic engine, after having studied the workings and the cost-benefit ratios of the common law and civil law systems, in 2003 decided to adopt the Latin notariat (civil law) system and since 2010 has been sending delegations to Italy to study this model. “We are interested in notarial activities in conveyancing and company law but also the history of the Italian notariat,” explains Zhou Zhiyang, President of the Beijing Notariat and Councillor of the National Notariat. “We are adopting a Latin model that is however adjusted for the local political and economic system. The State needs a public official who applies the law and guarantees up-front checks. The Chinese government’s present slogan is ‘building social harmony’ and the government is asking us to contribute directly to economic and social development. So the meeting with the Italian notariat is a professional stimulus to be of assistance to the Chinese government’s mission.”

And after the Chinese came the Russians: a delegation from the Notariat of Moscow underwent a three-day training session in Rome. “This is recognition that rewards our far-sightedness,” recalls the Notaries’ President Giancarlo Laurini, “because as early as the 1980s we were visiting China to interest them in our model. And then we were the first to invest in technology, to the point where today we have an IT system for the transmission of deeds that is a world leader and we are the first country in the world to have a law on the computerised notarial public deed.”